Alaa Minawi’s The Liminal gives an alternative definition of “immersive” from the typical technological, digital one. In his practice, the Palestinian-Lebanese-Dutch interdisciplinary artist explores the possibilities of merging installation and performance art. The Liminal—the first part of his speculative series about Arabfuturism—is a 3.5-meter wall with 24 speakers placed inside, programmed to take the audience on a listening journey.
What seems like a simple white wall is actually a repository of stories of people excluded from traditional power structures, who in turn claim their own spaces and communities “inside the wall.” The piece calls guests to actively listen and bear witness as they move along the wall following the voices, drawing their own physical performance.
The piece premiered as a work-in-progress at IDFA’s DocLab last year, where it won a Special Jury Award for Immersive Non-Fiction. In an expanded version, which premiered at Spring Performing Arts Festival Utrecht in May 2025, Manawi shifted the documentary stories to fictionalized expressions of reality. Those four stories are written by him and Lebanese writer Raafat Majzoub, three of which are inspired by the original interviews. The last expands on a text previously written by Ibrahim Ibrahim Nehm. Of this exhibit, Minawi said, “I wanted to talk about what has happened, directly, about the genocide and our Arab reality. It was very difficult to find the language, until eventually, I felt that poetic, philosophical language is the best way to deal with what is happening.”
originally published on Documentary